THE SIXTH MONUMENT

Covering any race in the weeks after the Tour de France was always a let-down, no matter how distinguished the event’s history or how high quality the field. The sense of anticlimax, bizarrely enough, makes them all quite easy to remember. The Wincanton Classic in Newcastle in 1989 seemed light years away from the high-octane battle between Laurent Fignon and Greg LeMond that had decided the Tour. After the Lord Mayor’s Show and all that.

The following year, to give me a proper sense of perspective after four weeks Touring around France, my then editor sent me to a one-off race, the Forth Bridge Two-Day, run around the eponymous bridge with a mainly Scottish field and three men and a Scots terrier watching. But as I recall it, that low-key domestic race felt more impactful than the 1991 assignment: the Züri-Metzgete, or Championship of Zürich.

The race’s denouement was uneventful. It didn’t feel like there were many people around the finish adjacent to the vast Oerlikon velodrome; out in the countryside away from the main climbs the race felt like an optional add-on. The Swiss Germans don’t really do hype Latin style, but even accounting for that, there was no buzz. I can remember the winner, Johan Museeuw, largely because the future Classics star was going bald at this stage